Victims’ Families and Death Penalty Repeal Efforts

Efforts to repeal the death penal­ty have often focused on the needs of mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. For exam­ple, in Connecticut, 179 mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies signed a let­ter to leg­is­la­tors, which stated, 

Our direct expe­ri­ences with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and strug­gling with grief have led us all to the same con­clu­sion: Connecticut’s death penal­ty fails vic­tims’ fam­i­lies…. In Connecticut, the death penal­ty is a false promise that goes unful­filled, leav­ing vic­tims’ fam­i­lies frus­trat­ed and angry after years of fight­ing the legal sys­tem. And as the state hangs onto this bro­ken sys­tem, it wastes mil­lions of dol­lars that could go toward much-need­ed vic­tims’ services.

In Maryland and Illinois, repeal bills redi­rect­ed funds that would have gone to death penal­ty cas­es to pro­vide ser­vices to fam­i­ly mem­bers of homicide victims.

Aba Gayle, whose daugh­ter was mur­dered in 1980, tes­ti­fied against the death penal­ty at a House Judiciary Committee hear­ing in Oregon. She said that those in her sit­u­a­tion will nev­er expe­ri­ence clo­sure and exe­cut­ing the killer would not hon­or her daughter’s life. She told the com­mit­tee, ​“Do not tar­nish the mem­o­ry of my beau­ti­ful child with anoth­er senseless killing.”

For more infor­ma­tion and exam­ples, see